The Tracy City Council on Tuesday decided to hold off on setting rural fire contracts and instead will invite the nine area townships the Tracy Fire Department serves to a July meeting to discuss the issue before making any final decisions.
The council at its May 12 meeting set a contract for 2026 (through next April), but this week agreed that at least one member from each township board should be allowed to speak on the contracts in front of the council and Tracy Fire Chief Dale Johnson III, who will attend the 6 p.m. July 21 meeting in the library basement to answer any questions.
Johnson said he is glad to attend, but he will not make any recommendations on the new contract.
It’s ultimately up to the council to approve the new rates.
The agenda for this week’s council meeting showed projected rates for the next 16 years, but council members frowned on the idea of going out that far, instead choosing to project rates for only two to three years at a time.
“I’ll be honest, I don’t want to go out until 2041,” council member Jeri Schons said. “That’s way too long to go out.”
Tracy City Administrator Jeff Carpenter agreed. “Pardon the pun, but that’s like drinking from a fire hose,” he said. “It’s like a moving target. I can tell you that our expenses are going up.”
Contract rates are based off a complicated League of Minnesota Cities formula.
“What makes this so complex to me is, it’s really different based on the department, what the department protects,” Johnson said. “We protect a lot of rural area. Does that mean the taxpayers in the rural area should pay for a portion of our fire calls, or does that mean that the City taxpayers should pay a majority of our City budget and our equipment replacement and stuff like that? That’s where it falls on the council as to what portion you want that to be.”
The current mutual aid agreement includes any call that is over four hours anything over that is billed to the City on a set rate; the City then sends that bill to the customer.
“It worked in the flood, it worked in the railroad incident we had, it worked in the CHS incidents that we had,” Johnson said. “Mutual aid is literally, we’re going to a fire call and we need help,” said Johnson. “We can ask whatever neighboring town we choose to send personnel, to send tanker trucks to haul water, to send grass rigs, back-up fire engines. There is no set call for mutual aid, it is purely based off the incident commander at the time and what they feel they need for response. It’s a giveand- take thing.”
Johnson said that in the past, council and township members would meet at the fire hall for discussion and information sharing; years later it was decided that these meetings would take place during regular council meetings, and that the fire chief would not be attending, Johnson said.
Schons said the scale of the project is more than what the council alone should go over before a decision is made and that the townships get involved.
“We need to get the townships involved so they can do their budget for next year,” she said. “I think we need to have a special meeting to discuss this. Dale, you are the one that has all the knowledge; we are not firemen and are not knowledgeable on all things that we need. We would have to have you there and yes, it would be open to the public. I’m not comfortable deciding on these rates for more than a year or two without more information.”
Schons said there has been some consternation about the contract costs among townships in the past when they weren’t involved in the process.
“We need to be educated before we set these costs,” she said.
The council technically has until the end of 2025 to set a meeting with the townships, but didn’t want to push it close to their annual township meetings in March.
“It might take more than one meeting,” City Deputy Clerk Diane Campbell said.
In other news from Monday…
• The Tracy Aquatic Center opens this Saturday with a full staff of lifeguards.
• July 7 is the target date for installation of new playground equipment to begin. Anyone who wants to assist is welcome, as the more people who pitch in, the less time the playground company’s employees will have to be here. Those employees are paid $2,000 per day by the City.
• Volunteer help is also needed for the June 7 Burgers, Bands & Brews event, which is being hailed as the kick-off for Tracy’s 150th Summer Celebration.
• The first Movie in the Park will be on June 20 in Central Park.
• According to minutes from the Local Board of Equalization meeting earlier this month, the former Chasing our Tails building’s main parcel was walked through with the new owners (Iterro). It was discovered that the former owner ripped items out rather than taking things out. There was some areas of ceiling that was torn down, and the cooling system was completely down and will have to be replaced and will cost an extravagant amount to fix all of this. This building has been vacant for some time and it was determined it would never sell for what it should be worth. The market value was at $493,000 and it is now at $334,300. The Assessor’s Office is recommending it be dropped to $158,700 until it is brought back to being operational. The adjoining parcel also has issues and had a value of $152,100, and the Assessor’s Office recommended a decrease to $83,700. This would also go back up once it becomes operational.
• The 2025 Summer Reading Program, “Tall Tales & Timber Trails,” has launched. This year’s program introduces a new format with custom cotton tote bags and collectible “badges” (pins) that children can earn by completing reading and activity challenges. The reading log is designed to look like a state park brochure, and participants earn a pin for each challenge they complete. Sign-up begins this week. Everyone who completes at least one challenge will be invited to our Trail’s End Celebration (date TBA), where they will earn their final badge.
• The City was awarded and has received a $30,000 Taylor Family Farms Foundation Grant to replace the main play structure at Sebastian Park.
• A five-year anniversary customer appreciation event is planned for this summer at Boxcar Liquors to commemorate five years since the store moved to the highway. Also, sales for April at Boxcar were about $4,800 more than what was budgeted for April.
• The police department handled 166 calls in April, compared to 127 the same month in 2024.
• The council passed a resolution to authorize the sale of the two lots at Sebastian Park for $12,500 each and the lot at Broad Acres for $17,500. The new owner will be required to build within two years from the sale date.
• The council passed a resolution to adopt a Hazard Mitigation Plan.
• Johnson said the fire department is 12 fire calls short of surpassing all of the calls it responded to in 2024, including some days that had multiple calls.
